New Episode of Resources Radio: “Candidate Tracker: The Future of Fracking, with Daniel Raimi”

WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: “Candidate Tracker: The Future of Fracking, with Daniel Raimi.”

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Daniel Raimi, a senior research associate here at RFF, and an expert on fracking and the shale revolution. Raimi gives insight on how the presidential candidates in this election cycle are talking about fracking: what the reality of a fracking ban or other regulatory legislation would look like; the impact a ban would have on jobs, the economy, and the environment; and how references to fracking have come to signal the broader stances and attitudes that candidates take toward the environment.

This episode is the second installment our Candidate Tracker series, which accompanies RFF’s new online interactive tool. The Candidate Tracker has been developed to compare and contrast the positions of the 2020 presidential candidates from both major political parties on a range of climate- and energy-related topics.

Listen here

Notable quotes from the podcast:

• “Fracking has been a useful catchall—it's a term that presidential candidates can use as a signal to their constituents that they are serious about environmental issues … When you say you oppose fracking or you want to ban fracking, whether or not voters understand all the details of your position, I think they sort of hear, ‘This person is serious about climate, and they're serious about the environment.’ I think that's one of the big signaling devices that candidates are using—at least in the Democratic Party.”―Daniel Raimi (11:36)
• “[A] lot of times, when people talk about fracking, there's an association between fracking and natural gas or shale gas … if you look at just the number of drilling rigs that are out there in the United States these days, most of them are focused on oil, and most of them are using hydraulic fracturing to get at that oil. So when we talk about a fracking ban, we're really talking about both natural gas and oil.”―Daniel Raimi (15:22)
• “I think there would need to be really serious attention paid to how to support those communities and support the workers who would be displaced by any type of fracking ban. If a fracking ban were to be implemented quickly in a way that was super disruptive, I can imagine the political ramifications of that being potentially pretty extreme … And I would actually sort of worry about the stability of some of those regions.”―Daniel Raimi (20:35)